PHIL CRAIG 1945: The Reckoning

Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck

The world is imperfect, the relationships between and within nations held together by decaying, infected band aids and fraying string. When the mechanisms that hold things together break down, terror descends upon the world. World War II is a classic example.

It is estimated that between 70 and 85 million people were killed during World War II. And its terrors were not confined to the years between 1939 and 1945. The current war between Ukraine and Russia is a reminder that World War II is yet to come to an end.

The world is imperfect, the relationships between and within nations held together by decaying, infected band aids and fraying string. When the mechanisms that hold things together break down, terror descends upon the world. World War II is a classic example.

It is estimated that between 70 and 85 million people were killed during World War II. And its terrors were not confined to the years between 1939 and 1945. The current war between Ukraine and Russia is a reminder that World War II is yet to come to an end.

This is the essential message of Phil Craig’s splendid 1945: The Reckoning: War, empire and the struggle for a new world. He explores what was learned from World War II, and what followed once the war officially ended with the Japanese unconditional surrender on 2 September 1945, and does so by focussing on key individuals caught up in these tumultuous times. Much of 1945: The Reckoning examines events in India, where he juxtaposes battles against the Japanese in Burma and India with attempts by Indians to obtain independence from the British. In fighting for ‘external’ freedom, the British repressed ‘internal’ freedom. A similar story played out in America with regard to African Americans.

Particularly important here is ‘The Atlantic Charter’, an agreement between American President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Britain’s Winston Churchill, signed on 14 August 1941. One of its clauses held out the prospect, if not pledge, to end colonialism by European powers in both Asia and Africa:

Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have forcibly been deprived of them.

Craig is only concerned here with the situation in Asia, and in addition to tracking the activities of leading Indian figures, he also details the experiences of a British nurse stationed in India, a British prisoner of war subject to slave labour in a copper mine in Formosa, a schoolfriend of Anne Frank’s who survived the Belsen concentration camp, and a British doctor who went into the huts at Belsen to work out if there was anything he and his colleagues could do to help those he found. Such information is provided in the context of battles, hand-to-hand conflict and war crimes on all sides.

Throughout, Craig employs an essentially chronological approach to his material, jumping forward and back as necessary to provide information on his protagonists. This is interspersed with decisions being made at higher levels by military leaders in London, Washington, Tokyo and Berlin. He incorporates the series of conferences held between Franklin Roosevelt, and then Harry Truman, of America, Winston Churchill of Great Britain and Joseph Stalin of the USSR as they jostled to carve up the world as the end of World War II approached.

At one stage as I was reading The Reckoning I wondered where he was going with his jumping here and there style narrative. Then it hit me with sudden force. Most of 1945: The Reckoning is an unrelenting account of terror; example follows example of brutality and barbarity; many difficult to read. There are accounts of battles; of bodies blown to bits; of atrocities and wanton killing committed by both sides – decapitation, head-hunting and the Allies paying for it. There is the treatment of prisoners of war – beatings, torture, starvation, overwork, death marches; the blood lust of soldiers, the terrible injuries of soldiers attended to by doctors and nurses; the treatment of persons in concentration camps and what the British found when they liberated the Belsen camp.

Included in the atrocities is the Rape of Nanking in late 1937, early 1938, when the Japanese raped, tortured, killed and mutilated approximately 300,000 Chinese in ways that, Craig notes, ‘even now are too upsetting to recount in detail’. In 1943, at the height of the war when the British were calling on Indians to support them against the Japanese, there was a famine in Bengal that resulted in the deaths of up to three million people, which ‘left an abiding stain on the reputation of the Raj’. The British, and especially Churchill, are condemned for what happened there.

… amid so many other priorities, the starvation of poor Bengalis never quite made it to the top of anyone’s list … Such was the dysfunction that India continued to export rice even as Bengalis starved.

And, of course, there was the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Germany, then Japan, unconditionally surrendered and World War II formally came to an end, but there was not an end to terror. Craig quotes the Manchester Guardian on VE Day, which declared the end of hostilities in Europe:

We have solved nothing. We are no nearer the Golden Age. But at least we have stopped the onrush of evil. We have won the right to hope.

Hope is not something we need to win. It is something we always have; or should have. Without hope, where would we be? The Manchester Guardian was wrong, however, about the world having stopped the ‘onrush of evil’. In 1945, terror and evil were still with us; just headed off in a different direction.

Japan was defeated in Asia. Remember the Atlantic Charter of August 1941, which declared ‘respect [for] the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they should live’. Allied troops now occupied most of Asia, the Japanese forces held as prisoners of war. What should be done with Asia, especially its old European colonies? The Europeans wanted them back. The French wanted Vietnam and Cambodia and the Dutch wanted Indonesia. The Americans and British obliged. After all, the Atlantic Charter was only a piece of paper stained with ink. To ensure that the people who lived in these lands would not be able to gain power for themselves, the Americans and British released, and armed, Japanese soldiers to help return the old colonial masters. Vietnam spent the next 30 years fighting to establish its independence in another round of unrelenting terror.

Despite the election of the Attlee Labour government, the British were keen to maintain their colonial interests in Asia, especially in Borneo, where military actions had commenced late in the war. In addition, the Americans were keen to establish their own empire in Asia in response to a fear of communism. We could add here, which Craig does not, the USSR colonising most of Eastern Europe after the surrender of Germany. As 1945 came to an end, bringing with it what we think of as the end of World War II, more of the world was under colonial rule than in 1939.

Indonesia gained its independence from the Dutch in 1949. Terror was employed to drive the Dutch out. Britain had earlier agreed to end its rule in India in 1947, and the country was partitioned, with Hindus and Muslims separated into two nations, India and Pakistan. This ushered in sectarian violence as between 12 and 20 million were displaced and up to two million people were killed.

In his account of these events, Phil Craig pays particular attention to the kindness, charity and humanity of his protagonists and others who occur along the way. This leavens the despair of the continuing acts of evil he describes. At a minimum he has reminded us how terrible war can be; how evil we can be; how terror and war diminish us as a species; and how fragile those band aids and pieces of string are that enable interactions within and between peoples across the globe.

Braham Dabscheck is a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne who writes on industrial relations, sport and other things.

This review was originally published on The Newton Review of Books 

 

Dear reader, we need your support

Independent sites such as The AIMN provide a platform for public interest journalists. From its humble beginning in January 2013, The AIMN has grown into one of the most trusted and popular independent media organisations.

One of the reasons we have succeeded has been due to the support we receive from our readers through their financial contributions.

With increasing costs to maintain The AIMN, we need this continued support.

Your donation – large or small – to help with the running costs of this site will be greatly appreciated.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969